I continue to be grateful for the national celebration of Dr. King’s birthday and annual reminder of his work and legacy, which invite us to hear prophetic calls to racial reconciliation; to reflect with honesty, humility, and contrition on our nation’s past and present history of racism; and to recommit ourselves to the common good.
Today’s Scripture from the letter to Corinthians 
offers us some guidance on where we might begin with such efforts. You see, Corinth was a bustling seaport in what today would be Greece but was then a province of Rome. Paul wrote this letter around 54 A.D. to the congregation he had founded there a few years earlier– a congregation made up almost entirely of Gentiles who had converted from the pagan worship of the Roman gods and goddesses to become followers of the Way of Jesus. But they were having a hard time following in Christ’s way because of divisions that had arisen.
Paul’s reminder begins with a powerful truth which is easy to forget: no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. Our ability to profess, claim, and live our faith only happens as a gift of the Spirit. We, humans, are so prone to mess things up, that we rely on the Spirit’s work in our hearts and lives to stive for anything like faithful living. In a similar way, any spiritual gifts we may have are just that…gifts!
And Paul offers us another essential reminder about them in v. 7: To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. This means that our spiritual gifts are never to be an individualized experience—it’s not mine to keep. Instead, these gifts reorient our very way of being in the world; they call us into relationship with God, yes, but also into relationship with and for others to bring about a more peaceful, more just version of God’s beloved community where all might flourish.
To remind us of our role in bringing about the common good, I’m going to invite us to hear some of Dr. King’s words penned in his Letter from Birmingham Jail.
In April 1963, Dr. King defied a state court’s injunction and led a march of black protesters without a permit, urging an Easter boycott of white-owned stores. A statement published in The Birmingham News, written by eight moderate white clergymen, criticized the march and other demonstrations. (As an aside, among these moderate white clergymen was the pastor of Rev. Dr. Edward V. Ramage, the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, who later felt convicted by Dr. King’s response and took the controversial step of declaring that FPC would be a church open to all of God’s people, regardless of race. Though many members of congregation were opposed to this idea, and he would eventually lose his job because of it, Dr. Ramage refused to back down, and his vision was ultimately affirmed by the Session. The prophetic nature of this call continues to shape that church’s mission and ministry today.)
The lengthy response that Dr. King wrote was begun in the margins of a newspaper while he was jailed. He smuggled it out with the help of his lawyer, and the nearly 7,000 words were transcribed. The letter was printed in part or in full by several publications, including the New York Post, Liberation magazine, The New Leader, and The Christian Century. Let us listen for God’s word for us in this abridged version of his letter.
My Dear Fellow Clergymen,
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky; when you are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and people are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens’ Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.
We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of [people] willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.
We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. [And] I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.
Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.
So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are.
If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.
Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world.
I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.
If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.
Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and humanity will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.
Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King Jr.
Friends, no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.
4 Now there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit, 5 and there are varieties of services but the same Lord… 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
May we remember that and recommit to such a life of faith. This day and each day. Amen.